The current development towards truly mobile computing and networking has brought on the evolvement of various access technologies that also provide the users with access to the Internet when they are outside their own home network. At present, wireless Internet access is typically based on either short-range wireless systems or mobile networks, or both.
Short-range wireless systems have a typical range of one hundred meters or less. They often combine with systems wired to the Internet to provide communication over long distances. The category of short-range wireless systems includes wireless personal area networks (PANs) and wireless local area networks (WLANs). They have the common feature of operating in unlicensed portions of the radio spectrum, usually either in the 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band or in the 5 GHz unlicensed band.
Wireless personal area networks use low cost, low power wireless devices that have a typical range of about ten meters. The best-known example of wireless personal area network technology is Bluetooth, which uses the 2.4 GHz ISM band. It provides a peak air link speed of one Mbps, and power consumption low enough for use in personal, portable electronics such as PDAs and mobile phones. Wireless local area networks generally operate at higher peak speeds of 10 to 100 Mbps and have a longer range, which requires greater power consumption.
Wireless LAN systems are typically extensions of a wired network, providing mobile users with wireless access to the wired network. Examples of wireless local area network technology include the IEEE 802.11a, which is designed for the 5 GHz unlicensed band, and uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to deliver up to 54 Mbps data rates; the 802.11b, which is designed for the 2.4 GHz ISM band and uses direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) to deliver up to 11 Mbps data rates; and the HIPERLAN Standard, which is designed to operate in the 5 GHz unlicensed band.
In wireless LAN technology, two basic network topologies are available for network configuration: an ad-hoc network and an infrastructure network. An ad-hoc network is formed by two or more independent mobile terminals without the services of a base station, i.e. in an ad-hoc network the terminals communicate on a peer-to-peer basis. An ad-hoc network is normally formed for temporary purposes. The infrastructure network, in turn, comprises one or more wireless base stations, called access points, which form part of the wired infrastructure. In a typical network of this type, all traffic goes through the access points, regardless of whether the traffic is between two terminals or a terminal and the wired network, i.e. the mobile terminals do not communicate on a peer-to-peer basis. The mobile terminals are provided with wireless LAN cards, whereby they can access the wired network or set up an ad-hoc network. In an infrastructure network an access point and at least one terminal is said to form a Basic Serving Set (BSS), while an ad-hoc network is also termed an Independent BSS (IBSS).
Wireless networked solutions are becoming more popular in various environments, and the market of wireless consumer devices is expected to grow rapidly within the next few years. Many of these devices will not have a separate user interface, for example, but are instead controlled wirelessly through a user-operated device. The user-operated devices will typically be small devices with a limited amount of memory, which means that large amounts of data will be stored on separate disks or in other storage devices wirelessly connected to the user-operated devices. In this context, the user-operated controlling devices are also termed host devices, while the devices controlled by the host devices are termed peripheral devices. A peripheral device here refers to a device that is not part of a user-operated short-range wireless terminal but controllable by that terminal.
The above division of functional entireties into physically separate compact units will cause problems in the control and operation of the peripheral devices. For example, downloading large amounts of content to a separate wireless storage will be cumbersome, due to the fact that the storages will not be “complete” devices as the present-day laptop computers, for example. Therefore, content has to be downloaded through the user-operated controlling devices, which may in turn have a limited memory space for storing data. Apart from being cumbersome, the downloading is a prolonged operation, which also reserves resources from the user-operated controlling device.
The present invention seeks to accomplish a solution by means of which the above drawbacks related to wireless peripheral devices may be alleviated.